The perfect escapist

Man uses action to keep away the wasps of thought and understanding. The man of relentless labour and business is the perfect escapist; escaping the world by diving too deep into the world.

The message

I can imagine the message from the billions of people who have walked the Earth, echoing from beyond the grave. It would be crystal clear for those who would be eager to listen: “live here and now in the Present, enjoy every big and every little moment, love and cherish with every beat of your heart, live passionately and die bravely!”

Beautifully existing

Activity and creativity are, by and large, good for man’s soul. But remember that you don’t have to do something every single day, to be busy every single second. Not even meditation or the like. Sometimes your inner self just wants to sit, to breathe, to enjoy; to beautifully exist. Because by beautifully existing, you have already done more than enough!

Oceans of uncertainty

Watching people around me, living, moving, struggling, fighting their battles, arouses in me a strange emotion, a blend of compassion, admiration and pity. For all of them, with no exception. Even for those who, at a primary level, my oldest, reptilian instincts would prompt me to abhor and scold. And, of course, for me.
Coming into being in a place and in a time that we could never have chosen, playing the role that was given to us, trying to survive in deep oceans of uncertainty, heading towards a grand finale that seldom is one of our own making.

Philosophy and Science

Science and Metaphysics show us part of what “is”. Logic and Epistemology help us interpret this part and understand how much of it we can really know. And finally, Ethics teaches us how to embrace this knowledge and how to cherry-pick only those things that will give us endurance and contentment in the long run, avoiding those that may keep our hearts buried in the ground; how to live well and decently and how to help the society function properly.

Inspiration

Don’t only ask who will inspire you, but also ask how you can become a positive inspiration for others. If all people, or at least most people, embraced this attitude, our world would be a much more interesting and much less gloomy place.

Pentalogue

Disapprove, but without anger.
Desire, but without envy.
Gain, but without greed.
Love, but without oppression.
Rejoice, but without arrogance.

Contemplations (XXIV): Idolatry

“Idol worship” is so deeply ingrained in the human brain synapses that it would be almost impossible to be bereft of it. And in absence of an external icon we are always going to look for it inside us. In fact, in many regions of the world this process is already in progress resulting in the pandemic of “self-admiration” and “self-deification” of our modern times.

The phantasm of selfhood

We say that a human being is a person and a distinctive, fixed self with a name and a life. He has an identity. But what is this self really made of, except from the basic elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus etc. and their subatomic particles? If a person is a specific, static, unchanged entity and existence, then what if an accident or a disease completely alters his body features? What if fear or madness changes his thoughts and perceptions? If dementia takes away his memories, or if drugs alter his emotions? And what if life circumstances, good or bad luck, modify his motives, his plans and his desires?

Is it still the person we say he is? Or is selfhood a ghost, a useful fiction of the brain?
An ever-shifting kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings and perceptions? Flashes of hopes and desires? A bundle of alternating opinions and ideologies, of conflicting instincts and urges? If we take away all these from him, what would be left behind? If every drop of the ocean evaporates, is not the whole ocean gone?

The immutable selfhood is a very old illusion and the last of illusions we ‘re going to abandon; if we ever will…

Contemplations (XXIII): Insidious damage

The evil done by corrupt and incompetent politicians has two components.
The first is the direct damage to the citizens who suffer from the bad or unjust decisions.
But there is also another, indirect, less distinct, insidious and perhaps more destructive evil. It is the creation of constant suspicion and unreasonable disbelief into the minds of the people. Citizens stop having confidence in, not only their “leaders”, but also in their scientists, their teachers, their judges, their neighbors. They no longer trust their fellow man. And this evil cannot easily be eliminated; it takes root in the souls of men and colours all their thoughts and judgments.